How To Make Chicken And Wine Coq Au Vin

We're making Coq Au Vin, which is French for rooster with wine or old chicken with wine. In the comments, I got a request for this recipe from Leo Weber. This was actually one of the first recipes I ever made in culinary school. The last time I made this dish was about four or five years ago. I made this for my wife. So I'm pretty excited to make this recipe today. In the comment, Leo mentioned that he doesn't see this dish on a lot of menus in restaurants. And that's true, probably because it's such a classic dish, restaurants feel like it's dated. But it's these dishes that are usually the best. So I got four chicken quarters, which is the leg and the thigh. I'm going to season that with salt and pepper. Just evenly coat that in the bowl here. And then just add in a bouquet garni, which is just some herbs tied together with some twine. I have thyme, bay leaf, rosemary, and parsley. It's going to impart some earthy flavor. Add that into the chicken. And then grab some good French burgundy or any dry red wine you have. Just make sure you use a wine that you want to drink. You always want to cook with a wine that you would want to drink. You want to let this marinate at least two hours, ideally overnight. Just cover that with plastic wrap and set that aside in the fridge. Grab a large heavy bottom pot. Put that over medium low heat. I'm going to start to render out some pancetta here. If you have bacon, that works as well. Just make sure you have a pot large enough because everything is going to be cooked in this one pot. I want to slowly render the fat out of this pancetta and get it nice and crispy. In the meantime, take out our chicken from our wine marinade here. I'm going to put that on some paper towels because we want to dry this chicken out. The drier the chicken it is, the more color we're going to get when we roast this chicken. Otherwise, we're just steaming it and we're not going to develop that flavor. Grab some paper towels and pat them dry. After a few minutes, the pancetta is crispy. All that fat rendered out. We're going to use that fat to cook the chicken in. So grab a slotted spoon. Just carefully remove that crispy pancetta and set that aside for later. We're going to use this for a garnish. In that same pan, bump up the heat to high. Add in that chicken skin side down. Once the pan is hot enough and the chicken is dry enough, it won't stick to the bottom of the pan and we can get that skin crispy. You definitely don't want to skip this step. It's probably the most important step for the entire recipe. So just let the chicken do its thing. Let it get colored. Don't try and check it every 30 seconds. Leave it alone for 6-7 minutes so you get that color on the skin of the chicken. After that time is up, you can flip the chicken and that's what you're looking for. Perfectly golden brown. All that flavor is going to be on the bottom of the pan to really set the foundation for this dish. Same thing on the other side. 7 minutes or so and just let the chicken cook. So once you've browned the chicken, remove it from the pan. Turn down the heat a bit and we'll add in our vegetables. Got some diced carrots. You want to let these vegetables get some color as well. Chopped white onion. And then finally some chopped mushrooms. Any kind will do. Just make sure they're cleaned. Season that with a little salt. A little bit of pepper. And let these vegetables cook down and get some nice color on them. And this is just adding another depth of flavor to our cocoa vent. So after a few minutes, the vegetables are cooked down. Got some color on them. And now I'm going to add in 5 cloves of crushed garlic. Just want to cook that down a minute or so. You could use chopped garlic, but I like the chunks of garlic in that. Just smash them. After that's cooked for a minute or so, add in 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. You want to really incorporate this well with the vegetables. And cook out the tomato paste for a couple of minutes. Until it starts to brown a bit. Now the tomato paste is cooked out. Add in 2 tablespoons of flour. And this is going to thicken any liquid we add to the dish. Which is obviously going to be the wine. Just cook out that flour. About 30 seconds to a minute. So now that that's done, we can deglaze this pan. I'm going to use some brandy. About a quarter cup. And that's going to lift up all the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. And really capture all that flavor. Once you add the brandy, make sure you scrape the bottom of the pan. To get all those brown bits up. Now we're ready to bring back that wine marinade and the bouquet garni. Add that in with the vegetables. And we're going to bring this up to a boil. Because we had the raw chicken marinating in it. And that's going to kill any bacteria from the raw chicken. And we want to let this reduce just a bit. So make sure you bring it to a boil. And let it reduce for a few minutes. Almost by half. And then at that point, add back in the chicken. And then we're going to let this simmer for about an hour. Just cover this pan. Let the chicken cook through. Let all those flavors develop. The sauce will thicken up. And in one hour, this chicken will be ready to go. So when it's about 10 minutes out in another saucepan. Melt about 2 tablespoons of butter. We're going to make our garnish here. To go along with our crisp pancetta. To this butter, I'm just going to add some mushrooms. I'm going to roast those down. Get some color. And pearl onions. Same thing. Want to get some color on this. Season with a little salt and pepper. And once this is roasted down. You could deglaze this with a little bit of brandy as well. The chicken's cooked through. The sauce is thickened. And this is ready to plate. Of course, you could just add the garnish and everything. Right into this pot. And serve this family style. But I like to plate this in a separate bowl. So just grab your bowl here. Ladle in some of that sauce. With the vegetables that were cooked down. This smells absolutely delicious. Bring in one of your leg quarters. Put that right on top. Spoon over some more of that delicious sauce. Some of our mushroom pearl onion garnish. Then of course, that crispy pancetta. And I put that on top as opposed to putting it in the sauce. Because it'll give it that flavor. But you won't have that crispy texture. And that's my cocoa van. Just follow this recipe step by step. I guarantee you it'll come out perfect. Don't forget to subscribe for more recipes.